


A Perch of One's Own

by YankingAwry



Category: Snowpiercer (2013)
Genre: Angst, Beard Burn, M/M, Miscommunication, a Swift Resolution Due to the Author's Soft Backbone, followed up by, in which curtis takes a hot steaming swig of Denial Juice every morning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-08
Updated: 2018-07-08
Packaged: 2019-06-06 17:48:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15200147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YankingAwry/pseuds/YankingAwry
Summary: “No,” Curtis said flatly, and Edgar’s nostrils flared.Here we go, Curtis thought. They fought in the dark, looping over the same arguments, rebuttals, and counter-rebuttals, until Edgar was right up in Curtis’s face, breath coming short and hard, big owl eyes trying to bore a hole into Curtis’s forehead and transfer some of his patented ‘sodding good sense.’ And two wires must have crossed wrong in Curtis’s brain, some freak misfiring of a neural signal, because when Edgar finally leaned away, looking thoroughly exasperated, Curtis’s chin pushed forward out of its own accord, his lips parted, just a sliver, and they both went still.There was a surprised silence. Edgar cocked his head to the side, perplexed, like he’d heard an odd noise and was straining to hear it repeated, just to be sure.





	A Perch of One's Own

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Springtime in Winter](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1487782) by [orphan_account](https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account). 



> some lift weights for stress relief; i write a 2.6k homage fic to the best fic of a dead fandom for a dead ship. [justin mcelroy voice] different strokes for different folks! 
> 
> thanks as always to [bruna](https://moriarty.tumblr.com) for the beta & for being an absolute god.

 

 

Curtis had barely finished his meeting with Gilliam when Edgar’s head popped through the curtains again, mouth puckered with impatience. Curtis shot him a look, and Edgar shot him one back before dramatically swishing the curtains shut in lieu of saying: _fuck this shit._

“Perhaps if you built him a perch on your shoulder,” Gilliam said lightly. Curtis refrained from saying _thanks, but I think we’re covered_ —Edgar’s chin had colonised Curtis’s shoulder two weeks ago. He knew this because they’d all been poring intensely over the latest message from the informant when Tanya had caught his eye and pressed back a smile, shaking her head when Curtis raised his eyebrows at her. It took a second for the warmth emanating from Edgar’s cheek, so close to his own, to flood all awareness and make him blush almost by osmosis. He’d tried a few hard shrugs, but that only resulted in an annoyed, “D’you have a problem, man?”, which turned two or three more heads their way, which was two or three heads more than Curtis would have liked. So he’d just given it up and started assigning shifts, resolutely ignoring Tanya’s face for the rest of the meeting.  

Maybe Gilliam read something of the bitten-down response in his face anyway, because he followed it up with: “Ah, but of course. You like your shoulder _yours_.” And then he nodded slowly to himself, as if this was significant.

It was what annoyed Curtis the most about Gilliam: the more insight he apparently gleaned, the more cryptic he chose to be about it. So Curtis gave a tight smile, because he didn’t know what the hell else to do, and saw himself out.

“ _Well?_ ” Edgar burst out, straightening from where he had been crouched, half-hidden in a dark recess. Then, before Curtis could answer, “And stop _glowering_ at me, with your fucking,” he gestured, vaguely, “scary eyebrows, and your beard, and your _cap_ — you’re doing it again — look, c’mere,” and having so listed his various grievances with Curtis’s face, Edgar tugged him into the recess. “This week,” he said, rising a little on his toes to look Curtis in the face intently, two hands pinning his shoulders to the wall. “Let’s do it this week, there’s a headcount coming up, we’re as ready as we’re ever going to be—”

“No,” Curtis said flatly, and Edgar’s nostrils flared. _Here we go_ , Curtis thought. They fought in the dark, looping over the same arguments, rebuttals, and counter-rebuttals, until Edgar was right up in Curtis’s face, breath coming short and hard, big owl eyes trying to bore a hole into Curtis’s forehead  and transfer some of his patented ‘sodding good sense.’ And two wires must have crossed wrong in Curtis’s brain, some freak misfiring of a neural signal, because when Edgar finally leaned away, looking thoroughly exasperated, Curtis’s chin pushed forward out of its own accord, his lips parted, just a sliver, and they both went still.  

There was a surprised silence. Edgar cocked his head to the side, perplexed, like he’d heard an odd noise and was straining to hear it repeated, just to be sure. Curtis bit down on his back teeth, blood rushing to his face, and made to shove off the wall.

Edgar pushed him right back into it, and not particularly gently. “You’re a giant pillock, aren’t you,” he said. It was very likely a rhetorical question, but Edgar’s well-documented allergy to letting Curtis get a word in edgewise anywhere must have started acting up, because as soon as Curtis opened his mouth to explain, or apologise, or ask for clarification on what exactly a pillock was, Edgar kissed him.

It was a soft press of lips, just barely skimming Curtis’ upper lip and landing more on his moustache. For an instant, they were sharing breath, and then Edgar pulled back, frowning.

“Did I do that all right?”

That wasn’t even a kiss. That wasn’t—anything. What it that _had_ been was embarrassing. Edgar was embarrassing himself.

“Let go of me.”

“Fuck you, just show me how to kiss,” Edgar said, leaning in again, and Curtis didn’t move, not yet, because—well, he was going to move any second now. He was going to tell Edgar to stop this insanity. He would be angry, but measured and firm about it, and he would inform Edgar that they would never speak of this incident again. His mind arranged all of these virtuous intentions into a neat little row—and they just kind of stayed there, in their neat little row, as Edgar kissed him for a second time.

Curtis’s fingers came to a light rest on Edgar’s jaw, and he opened his lips. Edgar gave a sharp little exhale of wonder: his tongue was a wet, shifting point of heat, and Curtis sucked on it gently before moving off to kiss his upper lip, then his bottom lip, no teeth, chaste, almost— _chaste_ , Christ, who was he trying to con here—

" _Pah_ —” Edgar drew back, turning his face away from Curtis. “Sorry, I—” he said, and looking vaguely disturbed, he slid a small hair off his tongue and held it up with his thumb and index finger. It was short and coarse, gleaming with spit.

“Reckon this is yours,” Edgar said after a moment, and his mouth wavered for a second before breaking out into a full, warm smile.

It was unbearable, and Curtis almost cried out in relief when Grey suddenly prowled past, fixing them with a quick, indifferent look before parting Gilliam’s curtains to slink inside. Edgar startled, taking a step backwards: Curtis seized the opening and made off as briskly as he could back to the main bunk area. Grey wouldn’t say anything. Well, Grey _couldn’t_ say anything, but he wouldn’t, either. It was something Curtis appreciated about Grey—he had a very strict threshold for fish worth frying.

Curtis took a hard left, slipping under a blanket someone had hung in lieu of a wall and rolling over a mattress before heaved himself to the upper bunk level. The clatter and bang of Edgar dogging his footsteps sounded down the corridor. _Stupid, stupid_ , Curtis cursed himself, and was working his way across metal frames when Timmy and Nina came into view. They were hanging off the beams of a particularly crowded bunk, testing how far they could lean forward before Tanya or someone else yelled out. He climbed down to the floor, avoiding the decorative Chinese abacus, and made a terse motion with his hand. Toothy grins went off like camera shutters. Timmy hopped down first with a thud, then Nina followed, delicately finding footholds in the empty space between arms and armpits.

“Edgar’s going to come through there,” he turned around and pointed, “in ten, twenty seconds tops, and he’s going to be very angry—”

Nina cut him off. “An hour with the ball.” Then, when Timmy nudged her, she crossed her arms over her chest, mustering something more intimidating and less _My head is level with your waist_.

“Deal,” Curtis muttered, wondering how in hell he was going to swing that. He jogged up the passage, ducking into another heavily curtained area. A yelp could be heard, followed by a string of rowdy British swearwords. Curtis took a deep breath, then looked around. Eight elderly women stared back at him, playing cards in their hands. They were sat cross-legged on the mattress, and in the middle of their rough octagon Curtis could see the stakes: cubes of chronol, safety pins, heavy stacks of protein blocks. The jagged edge of a Turkish evil eye, glinting a dull blue. _Christ._

One of them—Kiran, his mind provided, the one who was nursing a black eye from last week when she’d spat at a guard—pointed to the exit, back through the blanket walls. “You are a man,” she reminded him.

Today, that statement felt debatable. His jaw set, Curtis made his egress from the Women’s Bunk.

  


-|-

  


There wasn’t much avoiding to be done in a space that goes straight in one direction forever and five metres from side to side in the other. Curtis knew this, but he clambered onto his bunk anyway and tugged at the fraying cord which hung from the side. The canvas unrolled, blotting the outside, and he lay down with his hands crossed over his chest. It was the most comfortable way he had found to sleep: entombed. Not quite a party anecdote, that.

Durant came by just as Curtis had begun to nod off, the adrenalin of guessing whether every passing set of footsteps was Edgar’s having thoroughly receded. He raised the canvas timidly and asked for a convening.  

“Gilliam’s sleeping?”

Durant didn’t quite nod, which meant that Gilliam was sleeping and Grey was standing guard to deter anyone from waking him up, likely by turning them to stone.

“Let’s get Tanya, Mohsin—” Curtis said, ticking it off in his head.

“Afi agreed to adjudicate too, he’s waiting by Barry’s—”

“So we’re at an even four now.”

Both frowned, trying to think.

“Kiran? Has Kiran judged before?”

“Kiran?” Durant asked.

“The _tough old_ _biddy_ ,” Curtis pronounced, before realising his intended audience was missing. “The Indian grandma from the Women’s Bunk—” he explained, and Durant’s face cleared in recognition.

  


-|-

 

  
By the time Curtis made it back to the barrack, Edgar was lying in wait in the bottom bunk. Curtis climbed up to his bunk, trying to telegraph with every muscle that it really, _truly_ did not bear discussion. After three seconds, once he had settled on the mattress, he allowed himself to think that it had worked, and was about to pull the cord when—

“Oi.”

“ _Look_ —” Curtis began, wanting what he said next to land _hard_ and _hurt_. He rolled to his other side to lean down and tell Edgar to just _let it go_ , when he came face to face with him, their noses nearly touching.

Edgar blinked. “I’m looking,” he said when a few seconds passed and Curtis didn’t say anything.

“I— _shit_.” He dropped his voice and mastered the urge to check for eavesdroppers. No sense in letting Edgar think this mattered. No sense in that at all. 

“Listen kid, I don’t, uh. I.” And he looked at Edgar, who held his sharp chin sharper, like a weapon, and felt his own face crumple. A creaking sound: Edgar was hoisting himself onto Curtis’s bunk and gathering him in his arms.

“Budge over, come on then—you big girl’s blouse—”

 _Try that on Tanya and see if you come out alive_ , Curtis wanted to say, but all that emerged was a hiccuping exhale. He buried his face in the crook of Edgar’s neck and let himself be held.

“It’s not—” Curtis began, and stopped. Edgar stroked his back with clumsy movements, like a clock’s minute hand broken between two grooves: not to try and fix this stalling old engine or get him to talk and be of some goddamn use, but just, Curtis realised, because he could.

“Do you know why the women have stopped giving birth?” Curtis asked, storing what he had been about to say under his tongue.

“S’too dirty to fuck,” Edgar said. Curtis leaned away at that, to look him in the face: Edgar broke easy as an egg, smiling almost immediately. “Fuck’s sake, I dunno. Tell me.”

“Because they don’t do headcount for the records. They do a headcount so they know when to cull us.” The smile tapered to a hardened line. “One baby now? Means one bullet to the head of someone who grew too old too fast later.”

Edgar nodded. “Right. Right, yeah, and what does all this have to do with you wanting to kiss me?”

Curtis went rigid. “Nothing, it has _nothing_ to do—” he said vehemently, and then, he realised, foolishly, because that accepted the premise, and the premise was wrong. He didn’t want _anything_. He didn’t _want_. He didn’t know _how_ to want: that was vital.  

Edgar kept looking at him, steady, and Curtis thought about having to tell Durant that Hana would receive the last roll of antiseptic gauze. About having to tell a man that his friends had decided, democratically and after great deliberation, that he would very likely lose his arm.

“It’s bleak here.” he said. “So I try not to let people take things away from me. What I own is mine. Mine for the giving, mine for the keeping. I don’t know if I’d survive any other way.”

“But it’s always bleak here. It’s always dark. It’s the fucking tail section, no windows for us.”

“Exactly,” Curtis said, the word making a deep, shuddering ravine in his chest on its way up.

But Edgar only shook his head and closed his eyes briefly, as if trying not to roll them. “You think I’m so stupid,” he then said, soft, fond, crowding forward until he was nearly sitting in Curtis’s lap.

“That’s not true.”

“Do you see this hole in my trousers?” Edgar took Curtis’s hand and guided it to an arcing tear on his upper thigh, extracting his index finger all business-like, making him feel the thready edges where the cloth had detached and gone flappy. “Nina. Came at me with incisors extended, she’s bloody possessed.”

“You should get it sewn up.”

“Nah, thread’s too expensive.” Edgar said. “ _You_ should. But I guess you cashed in on your outstanding favours for an hour with the ball.”

Curtis felt all the blood in his body redirect to his cheeks and the back of his neck. Before he could thank some higher entity for the minimum reprieve of all the lights being out, Edgar’s fingers were trekking through his beard, nimbly dipping under his temple to take the cap off.

“Hold me,” Edgar said, hot breath against his ear. “Hold me like I held you.” His hand clutched at Curtis’s hair, testing it at its roots. The bend of his other arm settled around Curtis’s neck in a loving headlock.

“Okay,” Curtis said, his hands reaching up, feeling entirely overrun. “All right,” and Edgar kissed him, curving into Curtis like he might burrow inside altogether, chest pressed flush against his. They kissed fully, nothing half-assed about it, Edgar performing a full inspection of Curtis’s mouth with his tongue and gasping when Curtis gave an edge of teeth to his bottom lip, then mimicking the move, all the sweeter for his goddamn artlessness.

 _Almost chaste_ , Curtis thought, and tried not to laugh into Edgar’s mouth, because that was what deranged people did.  

They parted after many minutes, breathing heavily. “Exactly,” Edgar echoed, his hands moving, bracing against Curtis’s chest. “ _This_ exactly, not your exactly.” Then: “ _Fuck_ , fucking beard burn—”

Curtis’s hand went to his chin, self-conscious. “Do I. Should I—”

There was something in it, the absent, unthinking placement of Edgar’s hands on his chest. It reminded him of the way Tanya’s hand sunk into Timmy’s hair.

“Don’t you go shaving anything—”

 _Proprietary_ , Curtis recognised, a violent rattling against his ribcage.

“—can’t even be dramatic without you gravely accepting the consequences like the total _arse_ you are—”

Curtis removed one of Edgar’s hands from his chest, and Edgar trailed off. He took the hand and linked it with his, warm, tight, immoveable, then looked back at Edgar in defiance. Edgar stared him down, considering, and Curtis held every muscle still under the artillery fire of his attention.  

“You were at, ‘like the total arse you are’, I think—” he said, and Edgar tackled him to the mattress.

 

 


End file.
